The Texas Book Festival lineup has been announced. If you’re in Austin this October, stop by the check out Chad Harbach, Erin Morgenstern, Lev Grossman, and Amy Waldman among others.
Texas Book Festival
Nonfiction for Fiction Writers
“I think writing about the real world, as we live in it today, is very difficult; many writers try to escape it. But then what books will be the classics from our generation? Which of them will be the commentaries on our lot?” William Ruof argues that studying nonfiction may make the best fiction writers in a piece for The State Press.
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But Who Hates On The Haters?
Jonathan Franzen’s Kraus Project should be “a match made in heaven,” writes Jacob Mikanowski, because of how it pairs together “the old hater [Karl Kraus] and the new [Franzen], the Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid of cultural criticism drawn together across the gulf of a century to take on all comers.” Alas, the end result is instead a “strange and rather discordant experience, like receiving a deep tissue massage while being spat on from a great height.” (Bonus: One of the best London Review of Books openers of all time.)
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Elif Şafak Accused of Plagiarism Again
Accusations of plagiarism – the real kind, which is not to be confused with “self-plagiarism” – just keep following Turkish writer Elif Şafak, don’t they? Lydia Kiesling previously reported on the fiasco around her book Iskender last August, but now more allegations are surrounding the cover art on Şafak’s latest novel, Şemspare.
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Society of Authors Speaks Out Against Publishers
The ongoing Hachette vs. Amazon feud has writers and publishers up in arms, but according to the Society of Authors there are no heroes in publishing.
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Leigh Stein Two-Fer
Here’s double-shot of The Fallback Plan author Leigh Stein courtesy of Full-Stop and NY Daily News.
Pre-Revolutionary Russia… In Living Color
Tsar Nicholas II commissioned Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky to document pre-revolutionary Russia. His color photographs taken between 1904 and 1916 are incredible.